Theory on why Fox cancelled Firefly
POSTED BY: killerbrain
UPDATED: Friday, December 2, 2005 07:25
VIEWED: 9026
PAGE 3 of 4
Well, I don't want to push too hard on this, since we all have something in common, which is we love Firefly. No reason to start divisions or anything. It just seemed to kind of make sense for me-- I was half expecting someone to say, "not that crazy idea again". But maybe I'm the first?
I suppose we should be glad Fox at least gave 'em a fighting chance.
The tragedy of its cancellation is part of its allure. Without the backstory of how it was cancelled, I know my brother-in-law wouldn't have gotten hooked as easily. He was saying all the time, "I can't believe they cancelled this!" as he watched another episode with me last week. Plus he knew he could finish it in a weekend. The idea of starting in on a stack of 7 seasons would have been more mentally daunting.
Gotta love a villian. Nothing like a cause worth fighting for. Just don't get too bitter, I guess.
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Nah, changed my mind. Won't let it die. Not a good time to be questioning authority on the Fox network, 2002. Remember the political climate in the year after 9/11? Being a trouble maker, aiming to disobey, could get you branded a terrorist (even looking at some books in the library would get you funny looks).
There's a memo in Murdoch or O'Reilly's office under a stack of papers that says "get rid of that menace firefly thing. who greenlighted that? fire 'em. and put it in the friday night timeslot. moo ha ha." Or something to that effect.
The good thing for us is: if there's anything to it, and we can get some big-name journalist or the outfoxed guy on the case (thanks for the link)-- then to save face maybe Fox would sell it to SciFi for cheap just to unload it and not be accused of sitting on it for political reasons.
Come on, this could be the ticket to getting back Firefly! We can't let them get away with it! We need an insider to find that memo, or at least the smoking gun email message.
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I had never heard of Firefly until I went to see Serenity. I never seen it advertised anywhere, never seen a flyer, never seen it in magazines, never seen it in the tv guide, never heard of it until I stumbled into the movie Serenity.
I've heard of Buffy The Vampire Owner. I turn around and theres a photograph of Buffy on the side of a bus. I open up the tv guide and there's Buffy again. I'm watching tv and there's a commercial for Buffy, I'm eating in a resturant and theres two people over in the booth talking about Buffy...why wasnt Firefly treated like this?
It seems like this Firefly had some kind of opposition right from the start.
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I’ll tell you the real reason why fox canceled Firefly. The actors from fox’s other shows were all jealous of how good looking the Firefly cast was. The other shows demanded that fox to hire more attractive actors for their shows. Scientists warned fox that if all the actors from all their shows were as gorgeous as the Firefly cast then the network would have a dangerous level of sexiness and could cause permanent eye damage to the audience and melt all their television sets. The producers at fox had no choice but to cancel Firefly to appease the other shows and to prevent a horrible eye boiling catastrophe, a horribly sexy eye boiling catastrophe.
"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam
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Fox News is the equivalent of George Orwell's 1984 Newspeak. They ignore the truth or try like the devil to alter people's perception of it. They care less about facts and more about audience share. All of their political talk shows slant so far to the right their almost horizontal yet they make the audacious claim that they are "Fair and Balanced". The whole Fox conglomerate is run my Rupert Murdoch. One whiff of the sentiments in Firefly and he'd be against it in a nanosecond. It's no small wonder that it wasn't given the backing. There's a demographic out there somewhere that says it all. Off the entire population of Earth there are 20% who are either Browncoats or potential Browncoats and they are intelligent, open-minded and not naive enough to think that their government wouldn't lie to them or screw them over. Then there are the 10% who are intelligent yet have no ethics and morals other than self-serving ones and feel no compassion (yet fake it for appearances) no remorse and would strangle a puppy just for fun. Fox execs and Neocons fall into this group. The other 70% are mindless sheep easily led and easily entertained my brainless pablum like the Brady Bunch Movie and other tasteless crap that network TV is overrun with.
Jaytee
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Well said, Jaytee!
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Is it just me? or are television stations in the business of making money rather than killing shows they know are great because they could possibly be interpreted to be pro-liberal? Any thoughts on why they would cancel this show if they thought it could make money?
I can only see one way politics would have affected the show...
I don't happen to see a paticularly liberal agenda behind firefly despite the fact that I am conservative (aka- all that is evil in this 'verse, as seems to be the general consensus).. but if fox canceled the show because they thought in the current climate of America, people wouldn't like a liberal show so it wouldn't make money, that is a real reason to cancel the show. If that was the reason (and I donn't think it is) then any station would have done the same thing. Not just the conservative one.
I have to say again though... I DON'T think politics were why Firefly was not nurtured.
"You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with until you understand whose in ruttin' command here."
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Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
I had never heard of Firefly until I went to see Serenity. I never seen it advertised anywhere, never seen a flyer, never seen it in magazines, never seen it in the tv guide, never heard of it until I stumbled into the movie Serenity.
I've heard of Buffy The Vampire Owner. I turn around and theres a photograph of Buffy on the side of a bus. I open up the tv guide and there's Buffy again. I'm watching tv and there's a commercial for Buffy, I'm eating in a resturant and theres two people over in the booth talking about Buffy...why wasnt Firefly treated like this?
It seems like this Firefly had some kind of opposition right from the start.
Buffy had to become a hit show before it got that kind of coverage. It wasn't untill about the 3rd season that it started getting all that attention.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."
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My first reaction to this thread was that Fox most likely cancelled the series because it was expensive and they didn’t get it. Cowboys in space sounds ridiculous. The main characters are thieves, not terrorists. But when I took the Firefly set home over Thanksgiving my mom’s unimpressed reaction was “this is one of those anti-government shows”. She lives in a small rural community and has fallen prey to conservative talk radio and Fox news. She no longer likes other network news because they are “too obviously liberal”. That reaction keeps me from completely disbelieving the Fox political agenda sunk Firefly.
I can’t understand why Fox picked up Firefly to begin with, but since they didn’t run the pilot it’s clear they saw something they didn’t like. I never saw this show or a single commercial for it when it was on. In contrast, you could choke on all the advertising for Dark Angel. But maybe that’s why they chickened out with Firefly – their previous expensive, anti-government scifi show had just tanked (after 9/11), despite having a big name director.
I saw very few commercials for Serenity on network television, and might have overlooked it if not for the trailer on mac.com which hooked me. The good news is I’m converting my friends and family, and I keep running into more people who are talking about the show.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Nandy:
Is it just me? or are television stations in the business of making money rather than killing shows they know are great because they could possibly be interpreted to be pro-liberal? Any thoughts on why they would cancel this show if they thought it could make money?
Well, first of all I don't think Firefly is a liberal vs conservative thing. It's a regular folk vs big corrupt entities thing. The Alliance and Blue Sun are in bed together. You could say the same thing about Fox and this administration, especially during the run-up and beginning of the war. That maybe made Fox uneasy, perhaps without even knowing why. And they did let it run for a season anyway-- despite their unease they liked money more, so hoped it might make a buck. But it was half hearted. You can't play this cut-throat TV ratings game with one hand behind your back and win. They were fooling themselves.
Maybe deep inside Fox hated what they had become. They subconsciously undermined their own success. That way, they could kill the show and punish themselves for their complicity at the same time.
Who knows what lurked inside the deep dark tormented collective subconscious of the Fox network executive? Were there monkeys?
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